The Huntress Book 1 Memories (4 page)

I know that everything he says is a complete
lie, as I begin to understand the kind of referring, especially
after I made the connection between his words and his attitude.
Nausea tightens my stomach and neck. My mouth is filled with water
that when you feel like throwing up.

Suddenly I pushed him and he loses his
balance. I jump off the chair and I rush to the door, looking
distraught its handle. I am unable to open the door, but only for a
quarter, for he sticks his hand in my hair and he pulls me roughly
back.

“Leprosy!” He yells at me. “I tried to be
nice to you. But it seems that I have to behave dirty with you. I
think you like dirt!”

Although I panicked at first, the anger that
I feel now exceeds the initial fear. His hands pull my shirt. The
old material had no way to resist. With one hand he holds my neck,
so can barely breathe: and the other tries to unbutton his pants. I
lift my knee and hit him roughly in his crotch.

“You bitch!”

He is groaning in pain, but my satisfaction
is short-lived. I cannot free myself from him. On the contrary. He
gives me a punch that stuns me.

“No one will believe you! Nobody, do you hear
me? Neither police, nor anyone. Nobody listens to people like you.
It will be your word against mine. People won’t believe a rag like
you!”

And then everything becomes hysterical. I
bite, I scratch, and I kick. With fists and feet. I hit him. I am
strong enough, and my shots are not easy. Unfortunately, nor his.
He takes me by my throat and he hits my head on the wall. My ears
are ringing loud. I see yellow in front of my eyes and I get dizzy.
I feel getting softer, and powerless. He puts me on the desk and
slaps me across the face deeply several times while yelling at
me.

“You slut! You rag! You'll pay for
everything! Did you hear? For everything! And how I’m going to
laugh!”

Already my shirt is made rugs. I hold on to
the jeans, but I have no power. I'm on the verge of fainting. With
the last drop of lucidity, I promise myself I will kill him as soon
as I will be myself again. Then I hear glass being made pieces.
Cool air entering... Shards that cover me... And then...
Nothing.

The first thing I'm aware it's the cold air.
I am surprisingly well. My head is still ringing. I instantly
verify the zipper of my jeans. It is locked. Tattered shirt is
arranged over me as well as possible. My face burns. Everything
hurts me. My flesh, my bones... I have a few cuts from broken glass
shards. I still do not realize exactly what happened. I stand. I am
at the river. I do not know how I got here. I do not know who
brought me here.

It's a long time since I cried. I do not know
why I’m doing it now. I began to tremble uncontrollably. I think
it's just a delayed reaction. I stripped off my clothes, almost
tearing them off me. I'm sick of them. I jump in the water and
start to rub my skin with anger bordering hysteria. Disregard the
pain of bruises, cuts or broken. But it doesn't matter. I want to
be clean again. Tears leak on my face in silence. I am aware that I
will never be right in such a world. No matter what it will happen
to me, no matter what happens, I will never have my justice. And so
I feel that something dies inside me. I wonder how, I escaped and
how did I get here. I feel like someone is watching me again. I
look in all directions carefully, but I don't see anyone. Perhaps
it's only the fact that now I’d see monsters where they are not. I
come back to the shore. It was already night. No matter how much I
hate now my clothes which were the best, I can't go home naked. I
dress back. My clothes are wet and cold. In front of me, something
shines. It's a crock. I remember the moment when the Director
grabbed me by my hair… If I had my hair shorter, I would have got
rid of all of this. I take the shard and the hair. I don't hesitate
a split second before I begin to cut with anger. On all sides. It
seems to me that I hear a sigh. I do not stop from what I am doing.
One thing is certain. Fear creates monsters. I ... I admit that
now, I'm scared. Fear is not good. I won’t feel it. It's best to
turn this feeling into anger, hatred, and disgust. And with a
little effort, I will succeed. I have to. Because although I always
knew that the world is full of beings who call themselves humans, I
only now realized that calling yourself and actually being one does
not mean the same thing. Are there real humans in this world? I
thought rapidly to Stoler brothers. Maybe, just maybe, there still
are.

I move hard and I head home. I already
started to get used to the sensation of being watched without
actually seeing anyone. It's better not to feel so damn lonely.

“Patricia, what happened to you?”

My mother looks at me panicked. In the
morning light I probably look more awful and creepy than I thought
I would. I shrug.

“Don’t worry, Mom. I had a little accident,
that's all. You know how I ramble through the woods. It happened
like that.”

“And your hair... Oh, God, what did you do to
your hair?”

I take the shard of mirror and I look at
myself. If it was uniformly cut, I think I would have loved my hair
actually. But my hair is disheveled in all directions, obviously
crippled by clumsy hands cutting so-so. Just on my forehead, my
hair remained longer, allowing me to keep my eyes behind it

“I really like it.” I say only half
lying.

Then she sees the torn shirt.

“Patricia,” she tells me in a stern voice
“you tell me truly, what happened to you?”

Yeah, as if she could do something about
it....

“I already said nothing. I had a little
accident, that's all.”

And of course, she pretends to believe
me.

The shirt that I'm wearing now is very tight
and its sleeves are even shorter. You can almost see my belly, as
it is so very short, and it has a hole in one of the elbows. I
really need to get some better clothes and I know how. Anyway,
today I won’t go to school like that. I'll go to one of the nearby
towns and looking through trash. But first I’ll wait for the
nightfall.

I'm lying for quite some time on the grass.
I've got one hand placed under my head, between my lips a blade of
grass and I look at the sky. I don't think of anything, and it is
better this way. I've noticed that when I do not think about
anything, I have more peace. I hear a rustling. You could say that
someone intentionally does that as to inform me that he’s coming.
Of course, it's ridiculous to think that, because it would be like
someone cared for my feelings, which I know for a fact that's not
the case.

Somehow I knew that the person that bothers
me is Dane. I could not explain very clearly what I suspected this,
because I can’t. The saying “you cannot escape what you fear”
crossed my mind in the same instant. Now don’t get me wrong. Not
afraid of him. But somehow I disliked the idea that he would see me
wearing this shirt. Not necessarily him as him, but I hated the
idea of anyone seeing me dressed like that. I sigh a sound of
annoyance. Of course he heard it. That's what I intended.

“Hello!”

He pretended well that he didn’t hear my
sigh, that he wasn’t surprised by my appearance that showed exactly
what I was: a victim of a near rape.

I mumbled something instead of an answer. I
do not initiate any discussion. I don't feel like doing anything.
And he sits upright, somewhat away from me. I suddenly get up like
I was commanded to. My heart beats more powerfully. I dislike his
closeness. It makes me think about Director Watson and his actions.
I know it's not like Stoler would throw himself on me, I am aware
of this. But I still do not like it. And he would not throw himself
on me, anyway, because there are at least a dozen well-dressed
pretty girls who would throw themselves at him. However, my too
tight blouse reveals the curves of my small breast, and I feel even
more stupid because of that.

“I'm not welcome, right?”

He speaks slowly and calmly, as if reassuring
a frightened child, or a wild, agitated stallion. Involuntarily,
his voice calms me down a little though. I take a glance at him. My
quick look is sharp enough though to notice his strange glowing,
yellow irises on my bare neck. I notice as well the way he clenches
his jaws, the way he swallows as bidding for something. But his
eyes do not look like the director’s. They look rather like mine,
when I think of a steak.

“Are you hungry?” I ask him.

His body stiffened. He frowned at me. His
voice is also stiff.

“What? What do you mean?”

I watch him, bewildered.

“You look like you'd be hungry. Nothing more.
Why do you ask?”

He relaxes, imperceptibly. He even
smiles.

“Excuse me. I didn’t want to rush you.”

“Rush me?”

Is this what he thinks to be rushed? I start
to laugh.

“Not at all. You do not know what it means to
be rushed.”

Perhaps my voice sounds bitterer than I
intended, because he looks at me again.

“You have really been through a lot, haven’t
you?”

His compassion makes me sick. Even
physically. His compassion causes me a real pain in my chest. Pitty
I wouldn’t bear. Pitty would make me mad. But compassion makes me
sick.

“Have you skipped school today too?” I ask
him.

He understands my need to change the subject.
Or at least this is what I get, for he then responds calmly.

“I haven’t. I went to school, but classes
were canceled. It seems that the director is in hospital.”

I lift my head suddenly.

“At the hospital?”

“It seems that he has been attacked by an
animal or something like that. Apparently, in this region you can
suffer a bear attack at any time.”

Dane has his voice very low. My laughter
swells.

“Really? An animal being attacked by another
animal. How convenient!”

“What do you mean?”

“You have a very fine hearing.” I say a
simple observation.”I tell you, that animal that attacked him, bear
or whatever it was, it was very smart.”

“How so?”

“It doesn't matter. But trust me on my word.
I am glad. I am glad that animal Watson is in the hospital. In
fact, I would have preferred to be something more serious than
this. But I'm going to thank for what I have anyway.”

And I start laughing again. I feel a great
satisfaction at the thought that Watson is in the hospital and
suffering. I'm pleased. Then, I suddenly freeze. Not a bear brought
me to the river, my favorite place.

“What bear? There was no bear.”

“Why do you say that?”

His voice is as tensed as mine.

“Believe me, it was not a bear. It was
something that came through the window.”

“What?”

“Yes, yes, I tell you. I was there. Something
has entered through the window and I can assure you that it was not
a bear.”

“You were there? How so? What were you doing
there at the time? And what was it? What did you see?”

I hide my face behind my hair.

“I...I… I mean...” I'm beginning to
stutter,”I don't know, as a matter of fact, too much. I don't know
what I say. Honestly, Dude, I don't know what it came to me.”

And then there was silence. Each of us was
thinking about different things, perhaps. I'm thinking about how to
fix my blunder, and he was thinking about what I was doing there,
probably. He may, of course, imagine what's worse.

“Why are you calling me 'Dude'?”

His question is so surprising, that I widen
my eyes, uncomprehendingly.

“What?"

“Why are you calling me, ‘Dude’?”

Clearly, he's upset because of that.

“So just like that,’ Dude’. What's wrong with
that?”

“It annoys me. Like we are all some little
things in your eyes, we are all the same for you.”

I still don't know why the idea upsets him so
much.

“But everyone's the same to me. I don’t get
it, why this gets you mad.”

“I have tried to show you that me and my
brother, we're not like the rest of the people. And yet, you treat
us as ugly.”

“Look, Dude, I don’t treat ugly no one. I
don't even talk to people. Had I interfered with you? Or to a
specific person?”

I can clearly hear him grinding his teeth.
His irises are glowing from yellow to orange.

“What?”

I flip to him because I don't understand at
all what he meant, because I don't understand why he is upset.

“You know what? You were not invited here, so
you can leave with your apishness away from here.”

“You know what?” he paraphrases me. “I am
going to go when I want to!”

“Fine!”

“Fine!”

We both bark to each other. I lay on my back
again, without paying him any further attention. But I boiled. It's
his fault that he came here and he found me with this horrible
little, drilled blouse. He sits so still that he seems unnatural.
He looks into the void. I study him for a few seconds. He doesn’t
blink. His chest is not moving in any way that would give me the
impression he would breathe. He gives me the creeps on the
spine.

He suddenly moves. I was back upright in the
same instant. I do not know, however, why I did it. He speaks
slowly, with the same voice from the beginning, soothingly. So
soothingly that I cannot stop myself calming down. I thought his
voice would contain something that could make someone submit and
obey him. The truth is that he did nothing, but showed me kindness,
ever since we met. It's my fault for being so callous and
mischievous.

“Listen, dude...”

I stop when he looks back at me.

“Well then… how would you like me to call
you?”

He slightly smiles. I can see his dimples. I
find him really nice. Well, as nice as a man who acts nice to me
can be.

“’Dane’ I think it would be great.” He
says.